Yom HaShoah: Day of Rememberence

Yesterday was Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. The name itself gets you thinking.

Why? Why remember possibly the greatest tragedy of mankind?

Why!? So it will never happen again.

If we remember what happened, if we remember the 11 million people murdered by the nazi empire, we can help to avoid it.

How?

By stopping it before it starts. By standing up for the minorites, the bullied, the unpopular. By doing this, we give the 11 million a voice, a chance to keep their story from being forgotten and repeated.

Last night we heard a survivor talk about her experiences, and she told us that by telling her story she avenged her family by showing the nazi failed. They failed to destroy the Jews, to destroy the weak, the infirm. They failed just as every one else has failed.

The survivors may never forget. Every day they wake up is Yom Hashoah. They may never forget, and we must never forget.

We also should remember the non-Jewish heroes of this time, the "righteous gentiles,'' as there called. Men and women such as Raul Wallenburg, who risked his life by giving Jews on their way to the camps Swiss passports, declaring the owner as a Swiss citizen, and thus may not be harmed.

He saved tens of thousands of Jews this way, however, sadly, he was captured by the Soviet army after the war and was accused of being an American spy and was murdered.

We must remember men like Schindler, who offered Jews about to be killed a job in his factory, saving there lives.

We must also remember Simon Wiesenthal, who after the war dedicated his life to tracking down nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice and Ii 1947 founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Austria and began collecting what is now the world's largest archive of witness testimony and other evidence of Nazi war crimes.

We must never forget what happened, we must teach our children, their children and their children. We must never forget......

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is the Holocaust remembrance day, to remember one of the worse atrocities in human history. It began when Hitler took command of Germany and told the people the reason for the German's loosing the first World War was the Jews fault. One night his followers broke Jewish shops and beat the Jewish people. This night is known as the night of broken glass. This was just the beginning though. The Jews weren't allowed to have government jobs and many Jewish shops where closed. Many Jews citizenship were taken away. Hitler then ordered all Jews must where a yellow star of David on their clothes so they could be identified. Many were rounded up and sent to ghettos where many where starved. They were then sent to "labor" camps. Most were actually death camps, such as Auschwitz. Prisoners were given rations so small it barely made a difference to the prisoners. They were worked to death, beaten, shot or gassed. Some were used by Nazi doctors as experiments. They lived this way day after day, month after month year after year. Their troubles didn't end when the war did though. If their camp was liberated by the soviets they suffered almost as much as they did with the Nazis. Many prisoners preferred the Germans over the Russians. Still, many held out and moved from war torn Germany to Israel. They were the ones that helped form the modern state of Israel.

Please take a few minutes today and remember those who were killed and those whose family and friends where killed.